The home of real patriotic British people.
The independent nationalist voice in the UK.
The Red Rose County - Lancashire.
A cummerbund & Griffinite free zone.A blog that supported John Tyndall.

Monday, June 26, 2017

Former soldier to stand trial on attempted murder charge

Dennis Hutchings was in charge of the Army patrol on the day that John-Pat Cunningham was shot

A former soldier is to stand
trial on a charge arising from the death of a vulnerable man shot dead
by the Army over four decades ago, it has been confirmed.

Dennis Hutchings, who is now 76, was excused from
attending Belfast Crown Court on Monday, where one of Northern Ireland’s
most senior judges gave his ruling on a ‘no bill’ application lodged by
the ex-soldier’s legal team and revealed the case against the pensioner
will proceed.

He is expected to return from England to
Northern Ireland later this week when he will be formally charged with
attempted murder.

The charge against Hutchings, from New
Road, Cawsand, Torpoint in Cornwall, arises from the death of 27-year
old John-Pat Cunningham, who was shot in the back by the Army in a field
on the outskirts of Benburb in June 1974.

Mr Cunningham was described in court as an innocent,
vulnerable and unarmed man who had a fear of people in uniform,
including soldiers, policemen and priests.
He was
fatally wounded in a field on Carrickaness Road, as he ran away from
soldiers who stopped their Land Rover in the area and followed him into
the field.
During the ‘no bill’ hearing which was held
earlier this month, the court heard two soldiers – Hutchings who in
court was described as Soldier A, and a second man referred to as
Soldier B – fired their SLR rifles during the incident, and that a total
of five shots were discharged.
It has never been
established who fired the fatal bullet that hit Mr Cunningham in the
back, and it is this point that prompted Hutchings’ legal team to argue
that “no reasonable jury could convict” either Soldier A or or the now
deceased Soldier B as the one who fired the fatal shot.

However, it is the Crown’s case that
Hutchings – who was in charge of the Army patrol that day – fired three
shots, and that he failed to give a correct warning to the fleeing man.
Accepting
the case against Hutchings was “circumstantial”, Mr Justice Treacy said
that after “careful consideration” of the arguments made by both the
Crown and defence, and having “closely reviewed” the case, the evidence
disclosed indicated a case sufficient to justify putting the defendant
on trial for the offence of attempted murder.
The judge
added he was satisfied a reasonable jury could, during the course of a
trial, reach an adverse inference that Hutchings intended to unlawfully
kill the deceased.
Ian Turkington, representing
Hutchings, revealed he will be launching judicial review proceedings in a
bid to allow the trial to be held with a jury – and not a Diplock
non-jury trial.

This is why Dennis Hutchings and other's are being persecuted .............check out the date on the SPEARHEAD issue. All part of the plan to destroy the United Kingdom. Getting rid of Northern Ireland and harass British institutions like the Armed Forces.

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Grenfell Tower fire: Undocumented migrants could still be missing

Campaigners call for immigration status amnesty amid
concern victims are not seeking support over fears they could be
referred to police or Home Office

Demonstrators outside Kensington Town Hall during a protest following the fire that destroyed the Grenfell Tower block Reuters

Undocumented migrants and illegal subtenants who survived the Grenfell Tower blaze
may be unaccounted for and are not seeking state support due to fears
over their immigration and housing status, charities and legal experts
have warned. Underreporting of illegal subtenants could also mean the
death toll is higher than currently assumed, it is feared.
Volunteers and charities working for the support effort in the local
community have come across a number of undocumented migrants or asylum
seekers who have lost everything following the blaze, but are afraid to
seek help from authorities for fears that they could be referred onto
police or the Home Office.
Members of the community have also raised concerns that large
“swathes” of foreign nationals who lived in the block and may have been
undocumented have simply “disappeared” and are not on any missing lists,
raising concerns that they have either fled the site or are among the
dead but unaccounted for.

Play Video

Play

0:00

/

1:02

The Radical Housing Network, a London-wide organisation of which the
Grenfell Action Group is a member, has called on authorities to rehouse
all residents locally, regardless of their residential or immigration
status, urging they must commit to rehousing all residents.
Amid the mounting concerns, a government source said the Met police
had committed that if victims living in the UK illegally contact the
hotline set up for victims, they will take no action. They did not
mention whether Home Office officials would have any involvement.
One local volunteer, who didn't want to be named, said she had heard
multiple reports that undocumented migrants living in the flats had
“deliberately disappeared” following the blaze, including a large group
of Filipinos.

Play Video

Play

0:00

/

0:52

Share

Fullscreen

Grenfell fire death toll climbs to 79

“There must have been a bunch of people in that building who probably
escaped on the night and probably ran away from the situation. There
has been speak from other residents of a whole load of Filipinos living
in there that no one has seen since it happened,” she said.
“There will have been other people living in those flats it seems who
will have been undocumented. Those people were never there in the first
place as far as the social services are concerned. Because of the awful
fire, their won’t be any remains either, so there will be this swathe
of people who sort of didn’t exist.”

The volunteer said she had come across a young woman who was an
over-stayer in the UK and had been living with her boyfriend as a
subtenant in his flat since February, and was “very scared” of
approaching authorities. Her boyfriend has gone missing and is believed
to have died in the blaze. She is very scared and doesn't want to deal
with the police at all," said the volunteer.
“She told me she acted dumb in front of police because she wasn't
legal. She was frightened. These people worry that the council is in the
firing line so if they speak out they’ll hold off sorting out their
paperwork. Of course there’s going to be an underlining fear if you’re
not completely above board.”

Zrinka Bralo, chief executive of Migrants Organise, a support group
working in the north Kensington area, said she had come across a male
Somali asylum seeker who had lived in the building and was afraid to
seek help, adding that there were also many foreign nationals who had
not yet appeared on missing people lists. “We helped a Somali man who
had been waiting for an asylum decision, and obviously he lost all his
papers in the fire. He was afraid to get help, but we encouraged him to
go to the north Kensington law centre and he did, and is now getting
legal support,” Ms Bralo told The Independent.
“We haven’t even established the number of victims yet and who they
are. We know from our community contacts that Moroccans who were not on
any of the lists, Sudanese, Eritrean and Ethiopian families who are not
on any of the lists.
“Community members are organising wakes and they’re trying to figure
out where people are. My main message now is that people shouldn’t be
afraid. They should come to the law centre where they will be seen and
helped.”

Jolyon Maugham, barrister and director of the Good Law Project, said
it is challenging for residents who don't have migrant status, are
subletting apartments or are reliant on benefits, to trust the
authorities that that are "suspicious and sometimes hostile" towards
them. He along with campaigners is calling for an immigration status
amnesty for anybody living at the tower block.
Mr Maugham told The Independent: “There are concerns for
Grenfell Tower residents without migrant status, and also concerns for
those who were subletting apartments, and those receiving benefits and
whether receiving money will affect your entitlement to benefits.
“It’s very easy for middle-class people to assume that these
objections are all superficial, but the reality is people are very
concerned, and I think that if you live in that world that you know how
difficult it is to deal with suspicious and sometimes hostile authority.

(AFP/Getty)

“People may think I’m not going to get any compensation I’m just
going to get deported. Public authorities must commit to rehousing all
residents to ensure their future safety and security."
“Grenfell was home to council tenants, private renters, homeowners,
subtenants and people staying with family and friends. The council has a
responsibility to all of these people. No one should be left in a worse
situation by this tragedy.“
A spokesperson from Radical Housing Network urged that public
authorities ensure the future safety and security of all residents,
saying: “We’re calling on the government in conjunction with Royal
Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBCK) to act on their commitment to
house all Grenfell residents in the local area, in long-term
accommodation which meets their needs.
“Crucially, public authorities must commit to re-housing all
residents to ensure their future safety and security – Grenfell was home
to council tenants, private renters, homeowners, subtenants, and to
many people from other countries including migrants and asylum seekers.
“The council has a responsibility to all these people. No one should
be left in a worse situation by this tragedy, and the Grenfell community
must be allowed to heal together in the local area if they wish to.”
A senior government source said: “The Met have given an absolute
commitment that, if anybody who may be living here illegally rings the
special hotline set up for victims, they will take no action.
“There will be no attempt to find them, and nothing will be done with
the information beyond removing them from the list of potential
fatalities.”http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/grenfell-tower-fire-disaster-latest-residents-families-victims-homeless-immigration-status-migrants-a7798051.html?cmpid=facebook-post

NWN: What a bloody set up ! It's no wonder the authorities do not know how many died here or who is living here. Rumours abound that up to 50% of these flats are illegally subletted.With the real owners going back to their 'homelands' living off the £2,000 a month rolling in ad infinitum. A nice little earner, but apparently the authorities know this is going on. But of course, another 'blind -eye' by the authorities over the behaviour of these 'British people' in case the word 'racism' gets wheeled out to batter anyone who dares raise a voice. And we still have not been told why this fire went up in the first place. Once again, rumours of very odd behaviour by these 'people' suggest the how and why. Then we have this;

An amnesty for these illegal immigrants who should not have council properties in any circumstance anyway. That 'daft bat' Theresa May announced yesterday that the government have indeed initiated an amnesty ! The poster above declares an amnesty.

It's bad enough the crooks who cut corners building these properties and who are still on the loose. But there will be a whole shedload of other absolutely incredulous behaviours will be revealed, from the four corners of the globe where these people have come from . Enriched we are ! Diversity is our strength they say!

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Relief at last for Grenfell Tower families as 250
homeless residents are rehoused in a £2billion luxury block in
Kensington after authorities buy up 68 flats in £10million deal

Families made homeless by the blaze have been scattered around hotels after chaotic response to disaster

City of London Corporation has purchased 68 flats in a luxury apartment block for some survivors

Some apartments in the new block - which boasts a swimming pool and gym - go for more than £8million

Around
250 homeless and beleaguered survivors of the devastating Grenfell
Tower fire will be rehoused permanently inside a £2billion luxury
Kensington development.

The 68 one, two
and three bedroom properties have been bought for just £10million and
will provide refuge for families who lost everything in the blaze that
killed 79 people a week ago.

Apartments
in the development are currently for sale from £1,575,000 to £8.5
million but the developer St Edward agreed sold the 68 flats at 'cost'
price even though they have a market value of at least £160million.

Some
of the families currently being put up in hotels or even sleeping rough
or in their cars will be moved into the flats permanently from the end
of next month.

The development on
Kensington High Street has been 'one of London's most sought after new
addresses' with large rooms and balconies offering panoramic views of
London. Residents also have access to a swimming pool, sauna, cinema
and gym.

The deal is said to have been
financed by the City of London Corporation who immediately handed the
flats to Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council, who have been so
heavily criticised since Britain's worst fire for a generation.

+9

Survivors of the Grenfell Tower blaze which killed 79 are to be moved into this new luxury development in Kensington

+9

The development has over 500 apartments, of which the government has bought up 68 for those displaced by the fire

+9

Pictures of the development show rooms in the block's penthouses, although the survivors are unlikely to live in such flats

The property deal is a rare piece of good news for the families who lost friends and loved ones in last week's blaze.

The 1974 tower block, which was refurbished last year, was engulfed by fire after a fridge exploded in its fourth floor.

Everyone
on its top three storeys is believed to have perished including dozens
who cowered together in their final moments a single room.

Others died trying to escape or even threw themselves and their children out of windows to escape the deadly heat and smoke.

Since
the blaze anger has continued to mount over Kensington council’s
‘chaotic’ handling of the Grenfell disaster amid reports of survivors
sleeping rough and being denied cash because of confusing forms.

Nearly
a week after the blaze which killed 79 and made hundreds homeless,
desperate residents were said to still be struggling with accommodation
and support.

More than £300,000 of the
£5m emergency fund has been handed to families and over 100 people have
been moved into hotels so far, the group said.

However,
Lawyer Khatija Sacranie, who is offering free advice to those
displaced, said some people trying to collect the aid money had been
turned away empty handed because they had completed the wrong forms.

And one survivor said he was sent away with just £20 after officials ran out of cash.

The
botched response effort was branded as ‘appalling’ with people still
‘running around like headless chickens’ by Kensington’s new Labour MP
Emma Dent Coad.

‘People have to be looked after now. They have to be housed now. There’s still total chaos out there.

‘I’m
absolutely horrified to hear people have been sleeping in cars and in
parks because they don’t know where to go and they aren’t being looked
after. Even now after nearly a week that’s still the case,’ she said.

Speaking
to BBC Radio 4’s World At One programme, the MP said that she had heard
‘countless’ and ‘despicable’ reports that traumatised survivors are
still sleeping rough, however the response team said they were unaware
of this occurring.

She said there needed to be ’better communication’ of what is going on in ‘countless different ways’.

‘The
co-ordination is appalling. Somebody told me this morning they are
still this morning running around like headless chickens - that was
something somebody from the inside (said),’ she added.

Fellow
Tottenham MP David Lammy tweeted about reports survivors are being
‘threatened’ with being classed ‘intentionally homeless’ if they refused
being rehoused hundreds of miles away which he branded ‘absolutely
despicable’.

A mixture of one, two and three-bedroom flats have been purchased and will house up to 250 residents affected by the fire.

The
development will be ready by the end of next month, with the government
paying for extra work to be done to ensure the flats are completed in
time.

Communities Secretary Sajid
Javid, whose department arranged the move with the Corporation of
London, said: 'Our priority is to get everyone who has lost their home
permanently rehoused locally as soon as possible, so that they can begin
to rebuild their lives.'

The move came
as an independent public advocate to help bereaved families after major
disasters was announced in the Queen's Speech.

+9

The homes are being prepared for the survivors who are currently being housed in hotels around west London

+9

The deal to buy the flats is thought to have cost of the government tens of millions of pounds. Pictured: Show flat in brochure

+9

The Department of Commnunities
says it is working to get those affected by the fire rehomed after
widespread criticism of the shambolic response to the blaze

The
post was announced by the monarch along with confirmation that a public
inquiry will also be held into the June 14 fire, which prompted a mass
outpouring of grief and anger.

Announcing
the new roles as she opened the new parliamentary session, the Queen
said: 'My government will initiate a full public inquiry into the tragic
fire at Grenfell Tower, to ascertain the causes and ensure the
appropriate lessons are learned.

'To
support victims, my government will take forward measures to introduce
an independent public advocate, who will act for bereaved families after
a public disaster and support them at public inquests.'

The
Grenfell Fire Response Team said so far some £675,200 has been
distributed to affected families via £500 in cash, £5,000 bank transfers
and other 'discretionary payments' made by Kensington and Chelsea
Council.

+9

More than 400 people were living in the tower block when fire rapidly spread through it a week ago, killing at least 79

+9

Families still traumatised by what they went through have been moved into hotels around London since the disaster

+9

John
Barradell, head of the Grenfell Fire Response Team, paid tribute to the
volunteers and community members who stepped in after the blaze, and
vowed that more will be done.

He said:
'We are doing all we can to co-ordinate and bring in additional support
to help local people who have suffered so much, but know we have so much
more to do and won't let up on our efforts.

'As
well as looking to deliver much more and effective practical and
emotional help, we are listening very closely to the community so they
can direct help to where it is needed most.'

Metropolitan
Police Commander Stuart Cundy, who is leading the team of more than 250
criminal investigators working on the disaster, said: 'We will continue
to do everything we can to find answers to those who are missing loved
ones.

'I know that for those who are suffering, those answers cannot come quickly enough.'

Monday, June 12, 2017

We are not especially supportive of 'Tommy Robinson' and the EDL. But this video is a shocking indictment of the way the police act .

Greater Manchester Police have actually used this same tactic for well over 40 years.

They deliberately put opposing factions together and then feign innocence. The police deliberately instigate this violence so that a) the public have instilled in their mind that NF,BNP or EDL means violence, and b) arrests then 'prove' that the NF,BNP, and EDL are violent . Their 'criminalisation' campaign bears fruit for their masters the political establishment. A win win situation for them. There is never any trouble at gatherings if the left do not organise violence. The compliant mass media never blame the left for organising their violent campaigns.

For example, in 1979, they placed several hundred Anti Nazi League (ANAL) protestors right next to about 150 National Front supporters who were going into an Election meeting at Rochdale Town Hall in 1979 for that years General Election.

They placed no barriers or even Police officers in between. Then when it 'kicked off', they arrested a National Front member. They had scores of Police waiting inside the town hall ready for when the trouble broke out.

We can see one NF member being singled out for arrest in the middle picture even though many of the Labour party/communists were being aggresive. No Labour party/communists were arrested.

The last picture shows some of the police who were waiting inside Rochdale town hall for when the trouble broke out. They are pushing back the communist mob who had worked themselves into a violent frenzy. No police were used nor needed to push back the National Front members.

Later that evening hundreds of police were needed to control the disorder from the left wing mob. A report of the rioting outside Rochdale town hall was the main national headlines for the TV news on that night, including by the newsreader Angela Rippon.

As another point of Police bias . At that election meeting, the police insisted that half the hall must be filled by the NF's opponents. Who kept up a barrage of shouting, chanting and footstamping and who were allowed by the police to behave like that.

Even more sinister was that an Asian male who attempted to get into the election meeting was searched and a machete was found on his person. Rather than be arrested by the police, he had the machete taken from him by them and then allowed to enter the meeting to join the Labour/communist mob inside to disturb the meeting.

Friday, June 09, 2017

After the referendum, where the elite were given a 'bloody nose'. Normal service has been resumed. The electorate have returned to their voting patterns.

The 'establishment' breath a sigh of relief. Bankers like the Rothschilds will be full of glee.

We have behaved like the French, who voted for Rothschilds man Macron, and followed the suicidal policy of the decline of the UK and the west . This plan for the UK was initiated in the 19th Century. In 1900, the UK was the greatest empire the world has ever seen. Look at it now. These extremist politicians have done this - destroyed the UK .

More bombs and mayhem it is then, from the very recent type of suspects. Lap it up UK.

Tuesday, June 06, 2017

Monday, June 05, 2017

Police shoot 3 terrorists dead in London - will these armed officers face prosecutions in 30 years time ?

Because that is what is already going on with ex- soldiers and the Royal Ulster Constabulary GC right now in Northern Ireland. For example, people like Dennis Hutchings, a man of almost 80 years of age is due soon to appear in court in Belfast for an incident that occured in 1972 when he was a serving soldier in the Province. He has previously appeared in court in NI. The last time he appeared, the judge threw out the most serious charge. But the IRA's lawyer Barra McGrory, who is in current charge of the DPP in Northern Ireland re-imposed that serious charge.

Is this fear of possible future prosecution at the back of the minds of the brave men and women who must take the fight to these terrorists and need to open fire ? Will they be afraid of opening fire or even returning fire ? Will they hesitate ? Politicians of both Labour & Conservative have allowed and encouraged this sad state of affairs to develop and carry on.

Thursday, June 01, 2017

The
unsayable in Britain’s general election campaign is this. The causes of
the Manchester atrocity, in which 22 mostly young people were murdered
by a jihadist, are being suppressed to protect the secrets of British
foreign policy.

Critical
questions – such as why the security service MI5 maintained terrorist
“assets” in Manchester and why the government did not warn the public of
the threat in their midst – remain unanswered, deflected by the promise
of an internal “review”.

The alleged suicide bomber, Salman Abedi (image
on the right), was part of an extremist group, the Libyan Islamic
Fighting Group, that thrived in Manchester and was cultivated and used
by MI5 for more than 20 years.

The
LIFG is proscribed by Britain as a terrorist organisation which seeks a
“hardline Islamic state” in Libya and “is part of the wider global
Islamist extremist movement, as inspired by al-Qaida”.

The “smoking gun” is that when Theresa May
was Home Secretary, LIFG jihadists were allowed to travel unhindered
across Europe and encouraged to engage in “battle”: first to remove Mu’ammar Gadaffi in Libya, then to join al-Qaida affiliated groups in Syria.

Last
year, the FBI reportedly placed Abedi on a “terrorist watch list” and
warned MI5 that his group was looking for a “political target” in
Britain. Why wasn’t he apprehended and the network around him prevented
from planning and executing the atrocity on 22 May?

These
questions arise because of an FBI leak that demolished the “lone wolf”
spin in the wake of the 22 May attack – thus, the panicky,
uncharacteristic outrage directed at Washington from London and Donald Trump’s apology.

The
Manchester atrocity lifts the rock of British foreign policy to reveal
its Faustian alliance with extreme Islam, especially the sect known as
Wahhabism or Salafism, whose principal custodian and banker is the oil
kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Britain’s biggest weapons customer.

This
imperial marriage reaches back to the Second World War and the early
days of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The aim of British policy was
to stop pan-Arabism: Arab states developing a modern secularism,
asserting their independence from the imperial west and controlling
their resources. The creation of a rapacious Israel was meant to
expedite this. Pan-Arabism has since been crushed; the goal now is
division and conquest.

LIFG (Source: Liwa Al-Umma Facebook Page )

In 2011, according to Middle East Eye,
the LIFG in Manchester were known as the “Manchester boys”. Implacably
opposed to Mu’ammar Gadaffi, they were considered high risk and a number
were under Home Office control orders – house arrest – when
anti-Gadaffi demonstrations broke out in Libya, a country forged from
myriad tribal enmities.

Suddenly the control orders were lifted.

“I was allowed to go, no questions asked,” said one LIFG member.

MI5 returned their passports and counter-terrorism police at Heathrow airport were told to let them board their flights.

The
overthrow of Gaddafi, who controlled Africa’s largest oil reserves, had
been long been planned in Washington and London. According to French
intelligence, the LIFG made several assassination attempts on Gadaffi in
the 1990s – bank-rolled by British intelligence. In March 2011,
France, Britain and the US seized the opportunity of a “humanitarian
intervention” and attacked Libya. They were joined by Nato under cover
of a UN resolution to “protect civilians”.

Last September, a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee inquiry concluded that then Prime Minister David Cameron
had taken the country to war against Gaddafi on a series of “erroneous
assumptions” and that the attack “had led to the rise of Islamic State
in North Africa”. The Commons committee quoted what it called Barack
Obama’s “pithy” description of Cameron’s role in Libya as a “shit show”.

In fact, Obama was a leading actor in the “shit show”, urged on by his warmongering Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and a media accusing Gaddafi of planning “genocide” against his own people.

“We knew… that if we waited one more day,” said Obama, “Benghazi, a
city the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have
reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.”

The
massacre story was fabricated by Salafist militias facing defeat by
Libyan government forces. They told Reuters there would be

“a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda”. The Commons committee reported, “The proposition that Mu’ammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence”.

Britain,
France and the United States effectively destroyed Libya as a modern
state. According to its own records, Nato launched 9,700 “strike
sorties”, of which more than a third hit civilian targets. They included
fragmentation bombs and missiles with uranium warheads. The cities of
Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. Unicef, the UN children’s
organisation, reported a high proportion of the children killed “were
under the age of ten”.

More
than “giving rise” to Islamic State — ISIS had already taken root in
the ruins of Iraq following the Blair and Bush invasion in 2003 — these
ultimate medievalists now had all of north Africa as a base. The attack
also triggered a stampede of refugees fleeing to Europe.

Cameron was celebrated in Tripoli as a “liberator”, or imagined he was. The crowds cheering him included those secretly supplied and trained by Britain’s SAS and inspired by Islamic State, such as the “Manchester boys”.

To
the Americans and British, Gadaffi’s true crime was his iconoclastic
independence and his plan to abandon the petrodollar, a pillar of
American imperial power. He had audaciously planned to underwrite a
common African currency backed by gold, establish an all-Africa bank and
promote economic union among poor countries with prized resources.
Whether or not this would have happened, the very notion was intolerable
to the US as it prepared to “enter” Africa and bribe African
governments with military “partnerships”.

The
fallen dictator fled for his life. A Royal Air Force plane spotted his
convoy, and in the rubble of Sirte, he was sodomised with a knife by a
fanatic described in the news as “a rebel”.

Having
plundered Libya’s $30 billion arsenal, the “rebels” advanced south,
terrorising towns and villages. Crossing into sub-Saharan Mali, they
destroyed that country’s fragile stability. The ever-eager French sent
planes and troops to their former colony “to fight al-Qaida”, or the
menace they had helped create.

On
14 October, 2011, President Obama announced he was sending special
forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few
months, US combat troops were sent to South Sudan, Congo and the Central
African Republic. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the
African continent was under way, largely unreported.

In
London, one of the world’s biggest arms fairs was staged by the British
government. The buzz in the stands was the “demonstration effect in
Libya”. The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry held a preview
entitled “Middle East: A vast market for UK defence and security
companies”. The host was the Royal Bank of Scotland, a major investor in
cluster bombs, which were used extensively against civilian targets in
Libya. The blurb for the bank’s arms party lauded the “unprecedented
opportunities for UK defence and security companies.”

Last
month, Prime Minister Theresa May was in Saudi Arabia, selling more of
the £3 billion worth of British arms which the Saudis have used against
Yemen. Based in control rooms in Riyadh, British military advisers
assist the Saudi bombing raids, which have killed more than 10,000
civilians. There are now clear signs of famine. A Yemeni child dies
every 10 minutes from preventable disease, says Unicef.

The
Manchester atrocity on 22 May was the product of such unrelenting state
violence in faraway places, much of it British sponsored. The lives and
names of the victims are almost never known to us.

This truth struggles to be heard, just as it
struggled to be heard when the London Underground was bombed on July 7,
2005. Occasionally, a member of the public would break the silence,
such as the east Londoner who walked in front of a CNN camera crew and
reporter in mid-platitude.

At a
large media gathering I attended, many of the important guests uttered
“Iraq” and “Blair” as a kind of catharsis for that which they dared not
say professionally and publicly. Yet, before he invaded Iraq, Blair was warned by the Joint Intelligence Committee that

“the
threat from al-Qaida will increase at the onset of any military action
against Iraq … The worldwide threat from other Islamist terrorist groups
and individuals will increase significantly”.

Just as Blair brought home to Britain the violence of his and George W Bush‘s
blood-soaked “shit show”, so David Cameron, supported by Theresa May,
compounded his crime in Libya and its horrific aftermath, including
those killed and maimed in Manchester Arena on 22 May.

The
spin is back, not surprisingly. Salman Abedi acted alone. He was a
petty criminal, no more. The extensive network revealed last week by the
American leak has vanished. But the questions have not.

Why
was Abedi able to travel freely through Europe to Libya and back to
Manchester only days before he committed his terrible crime? Was Theresa
May told by MI5 that the FBI had tracked him as part of an Islamic cell
planning to attack a “political target” in Britain?

In the current election campaign, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn
has made a guarded reference to a “war on terror that has failed”. As
he knows, it was never a war on terror but a war of conquest and
subjugation. Palestine. Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Syria. Iran is said to be next. Before there is another Manchester, who will have the courage to say that?

The storm around Donald Trump
is about to shift a few miles west of the White House, to a conference
centre in Chantilly, Virginia, where the embattled president will be
getting his end-of-term grades from the people whose opinion really
matters: Bilderberg.
The secretive three-day summit of the political and economic elite
kicks off on Thursday in heavily guarded seclusion at the Westfields
Marriott, a luxury hotel a short distance from the Oval Office. The
hotel was already on lockdown on Wednesday, and an army of landscapers
have been busy planting fir trees around the perimeter, to protect coy
billionaires and bashful bank bosses from any prying lenses.

The Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, Virginia, where the
2017 Bilderberg conference will take place.
Perched ominously at the top of the conference agenda this year are
these words: “The Trump administration: a progress report.” Is the
president going to be put in detention for tweeting in class? Held back a
year? Or told to empty his locker and leave? If ever there’s a place
where a president could hear the words “you’re fired!”, it’s Bilderberg.
The White House is taking no chances, sending along some big hitters
from Team Trump to defend their boss: the national security adviser, HR
McMaster; the commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross; and Trump’s new
strategist, Chris Liddell. Could the president himself show up to
receive his report card in person?
Henry Kissinger, the gravel-throated kingpin of Bilderberg,visited
Trump at the White House a few weeks ago to discuss “Russia and other
things”, and certainly, the Bilderberg conference would be the perfect
opportunity for the most powerful man in the world to discuss important
global issues with Trump.

The US president’s extraordinary chiding of Nato leaders in Brussels
is sure to be chewed over at Bilderberg, which takes its name from the
hotel in the Netherlands where its conference first met in 1954. The
Bilderbergers have summoned the head of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, to give
feedback. Stoltenberg will leading the snappily titled session on “The
transatlantic defence alliance: bullets, bytes and bucks”. He’ll be
joined by the Dutch minister of defence and a clutch of senior European
politicians and party leaders, all hoping to reset the traumatised
transatlantic relationship after Trump’s galumphing visit.
The invitation list for this year’s conference is a veritable covfefe
of big-hitters from geopolitics, from the head of the IMF, Christine
Lagarde, to the king of Holland, but perhaps the most significant name
on the list is Cui Tiankai, China’s ambassador to the US.According to the meeting’s agenda,
“China” will be discussed at a summit attended by the Chinese
ambassador, the US commerce secretary, the US national security adviser,
two US senators, the governor of Virginia, two former CIA chiefs – and
any number of giant US investors in the country, including the heads of
the financial services firms the Carlyle Group and KKR. Oh, and the boss
of Google.
Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Alphabet, Google’s holding
company, has just come back from a trip to Beijing, where he was
overseeing Google AI’s latest game of Go against puny humans. He
declared it “a pleasure to be back in China, a country that I admire a
great deal”. Three days spent chatting to the Chinese ambassador
certainly won’t harm his ambitions there.
All this is the kind of thing that should be headline news, but with
the president of Turner International attending, we can be fairly sure
Bilderberg won’t make many ripples at CNN. And British readers should
not expect much coverage at the London Evening Standard either: their
new editor and longtime Bilderberg attendee George Osborne is on the
list, despite a general election looming in a week’s time.
You could of course complain about a lack of press coverage of
Bilderberg in the UK, but with the head of the media watchdog Ofcom at
the conference, you may not get an immediate reply.
So will Trump be given his marching orders at Bilderberg, or will he
be kept on as a useful doofus? There’s a small but worrying clue for
what Bilderberg might have in mind for Trump tucked away on the
invitation list: one of the guests this year is the UK’s former chief of
the defence staff, Sir Nicholas Houghton. His new role? Constable of
the Tower of London.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/01/bilderberg-trump-administration-secret-meeting